Tuesday, September 18

I've Said It Before, I'll Say It Again: Democracy Simply Does Not Work

I GOTTA tell ya, first, how enjoyable it's been hearing the local morning teleprompter reader introduce Mitt Romney's "explanation" for why he wants to be President of the Deadbeats with the caution that Romney "was recorded secretly". So am I, hairdo, every time I drive through a fucking intersection in this town. You oughta understand that; half your newscast anymore is YouTubery.

Mitt says he spoke "inelegantly". In other news, today's sky color: bluish. Fer crissakes, if you think speaking without elegance gets you in trouble in this country you're even more detached than repeating that 47% nonsense suggests.

Let's just say it plainly: Mitt Romney is not smart enough to be President of the United States. Paul Ryan is not smart enough to be Vice President of the United States. And that's taking into consideration the last pair the Republican party and its Court subsidiary foisted on us. And it's taking into consideration the fact that both men are professional liars, and likely personally dishonest into the bargain. There's lying, and then there's lying in such a way that you register enough contempt for the listener to not be bothered with good lies.

This is the Republican party. It's the Republican party since 1980, the Republican party since the time it lied its way past Watergate, lied its way past Vietnam and Civil Rights, and decided that lying was the key to a shining future. This is the party which has believed, since the Ascension of St. Ronnie, that advertising plus money was not only more powerful than the truth, it was better than the truth. Even smart Republicans have to see, now, what that's got them. Assuming there are any.

11 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Talk about pith! If only Riley had posted this sooner. I could have read 100,000 fewer words (elsewhere) and come to the same conclusion.

"Mitt Romney is not smart enough to be President of the United States." But...but... didn't he make a ton of money? Doesn't that take smarts? Not any more than burning down your house for the insurance. Besides, we know he had help with the legal technicalities.

As I say, this post gets down to cases. One reason I come here first. Well, second, anyway.

Romney has forced David Brooks to notice that a steaming pile of shit has a smell too unpleasant even for him to ignore so I'd say he's definitely not very smart about catapulting the propaganda. But then, from the looks of it, I get the feeling these days that the mavens running his campaign think talk-radio tropes are Romney's ticket to the White House. Either way, as Brooks writes amid feeble hemming and hawing and the usual bullshit, as a description of America today, Romney’s comment is a country-club fantasy. It’s what self-satisfied millionaires say to each other. It reinforces every negative view people have about Romney. This may be unprecedented to say about a David Brooks paragraph, but this is undeniably true.

The bestest thing about this whole mess is seeing the right wing trolls marching out with "Finally, Romney speaks the truth! Now we win!!1!" Or, even better (I shit you not on this), "The hidden video was a plant by the Romney campaign leaked to Mother Jones at the perfect time. Brilliant!!" Somebody better get the sad trombone ready for these folks.

Third graf, last sentence: Right on the effin' nut. Not even the common courtesy of a reach-around any more. I suppose we'd be more worried if we thought they actually believed any of their own bullshit, but that's more of a concern for the hayseeds in the cheap stalls, iddn't it?

Mitt has the same kind of smarts that got Robert McNamara the secretary of defense job. And the same kind of lying. The kind of intelligence that would have got both of them killed in their first skirmish in Viet Nam had they the "choice" of being there. And the kind of lying that gave our lexicon "credibility gap".

You can say a lot of things about Romney--and you have, as have I. But the one thing he is not is stupid. He has all sorts of failings that disqualify him for the presidency, but lack of smarts ain't one of them.

Same with Michelle Bachmann. She was often compared to Palin, but Bachmann is not dumb. Again, all sorts of of reasons make her scary and rage inducing and unqualified for any elected office, but stupidity isn't one of them.

We need to get that straight so that simply calling a Republican you don't like (and I don't like any of them) "stupid" or "dumb" doesn't start to lose all meaning.

"I'm a public high school teacher, and I have a suggestion. I think that the salaries of New York Times columnists should be based on the quality of the online comments their work elicits. A formula can be developed that takes into account both the total number of comments and the ratio of positive to negative responses. Further assessment could involve a statistical error analysis of the comments as well as a survey to determine whether the columnist's work has any lasting effect on the economy, based on the political activity of his or her readers that occurs as a direct result of reading the column. In this way, we can weed out the bad columnists and reward the good ones."

Run dry? The well has run dry, been poisoned and filled in with manure. I'll just leave this here (replace the word "Homer" with "GOP"):

Ned: Excuse me neighbour! I couldn't help but notice you picked pretty much all of my flowers!Homer: Can't make a float without flowers...Ned: Uh, sure enough, but did you have to salt the earth so nothing would ever grow again?Homer: Hehehehe.. yeah.